ombo shop online at www.missourivalleyshopper.com November 26, 2019 • Page 9 South Dakota PUC Reminds Consumers To Exercise Caution On National Utility Scam Awareness Day PIERRE, S.D. - November 20 was National Utility Scam Awareness Day. To mark the occasion, the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission reminded consumers that the best way to handle scam calls is to follow the simple adage, “Don’t Know? Don’t Answer!” Scam calls have become common. These calls are made by criminals with the purpose of tricking you into giving them money or providing personal information they can use or sell for financial gain. The best way to avoid a negative outcome from these interactions is to avoid interacting at all. Don’t answer calls from unknown numbers and if you do answer a call that seems suspicious, hang up immediately. “You are the first line of defense to stop someone from stealing your money or personal information,” said PUC Chairman Gary Hanson. “Do not let the scammers in by giving out ANY information or pressing a number on the phone or sending them Bitcoin, gift cards or money. Just hang up.” The PUC takes their role in educating consumers about the dangers of scam calls seriously. For handling suspicious calls, the commission offers these additional tips: If you answer the phone and are asked to press a button to stop receiving these calls, hang up. Scammers often use this trick to identify potential targets. Don’t respond to the caller, even to say “yes” or “no.” If you get an unexpected call from someone claiming to represent a company or government agency, hang up and call the number on your account statement, in the phone book, or on the company or agency’s official website to verify the authenticity of the request. Do A Perfect Vision Of Fun At The 2020 South Dakota State Fair HURON, S.D. – The South Dakota State Fair has announced its 2020 State Fair theme, “Perfect Vision of Fun.” “It’s going to be the 2020 fair, so naturally when this idea was thrown at us, we had to go with it! Of course, it’s true, because when you think about the fair, there’s a lot that pops to mind from food, showing animals, special memories from a prior fair, concerts, carnival rides, or taking a stroll through a vending building, the fair is just plain fun! The fair offers so much and means so much to people. People come to it to catch up, for a quick getaway, to show animals, the list could go on and on,” commented Peggy Besch, State Fair manager. “In planning and preparing for the State Fair, every step of the way we envision fun. Fun in showing livestock, fun in agriculture education, fun in exhibiting static exhibits, fun in riding rides, fun in sampling fair food, fun in entertaining, and fun in spending time with family and friends. Whatever the case, people come to the Fair to experience the “Perfect Vision of Fun.” Each year the South Dakota State Fair boasts a variety of events including livestock shows, 4-H exhibits, carnival rides, free entertainment, and topnotch grandstand entertainment. The fair also hosts well over 400 vendors for fairgoers to visit. An updated State Fair logo has also been designed and can be viewed on the South Dakota State Fair website, sdstatefair.com. Members of the media can download the logo here. The 2020 South Dakota State Fair will run from Thursday, September 3 through Monday, September 7. Channel Seeds Preview night will be Wednesday, September 2. For more information on State Fair events, contact the fair office at 800.529.0900, visit sdstatefair.com, or find it on Facebook or Twitter. Agriculture is a major contributor to South Dakota’s economy, generating $32.5 billion in annual economic activity and employing over 132,000 South Dakotans. The South Dakota Department of Agriculture's mission is to promote, protect, and preserve South Dakota agriculture for today and tomorrow. Visit us online at sdda.sd.gov or find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. making it difficult for law enforcement and government agencies to find them and enforce the rules and regulations regarding such practices. Fortunately, progress is being made. In recent months, some telephone companies have rolled out verification tools to reassure customers that the number showing up on their phone is the number that called, not a fraudulent “spoofed” number. This week, congressional leaders announced they have reached an agreement on an antirobocall bill that will give government agencies more ability to go after scammers. It will also require telecom companies to verify that phone numbers are real and block numbers for free. Find more information about avoiding telephone scams on the PUC’s website at https://puc.sd.gov/scamcalls/. The Bookworm ‘Snow’ Offers A Flurry Of Facts “Snow: A Scientific and Cultural Exploration” by Giles Whittell; © 2019, Atria. 256 pages ——— BY TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER Your shovel has been waxed. You’ve got good boots and six bags of animal-safe sidewalk salt, so nobody’s gonna slip on any ice. There are fresh spark plugs in the snowblower, logs for the fireplace, and you’re good to go. They say it’s going to be a long winter, but with some hot cocoa and “Snow: A Scientific and Cultural Exploration” by Giles Whittell, you’ll be ready. As a self-described lover of snow, Giles Whittell recalls the day his mother read “Little House in the Big Woods” to him, because it struck him so: they were living in Nigeria then, and the story seemed like “air conditioning in book form ...” From that tale sprung a fascination with cold, white stuff. But wait. “White” isn’t really the proper way to describe snow, he says; snow is actually YOUR RADIATOR HEADQUARTERS! • Great Parts • Great Warranty On-Hand & In-Stock! NO WAITING! Cox Auto not call the number provided to you by the caller or from the caller ID. Never give out personal information including account numbers, social security numbers, mother’s maiden name, passwords, birth date or other identifying information in response to unexpected calls. Be cautious when posting private information on social media. Some posts, particularly those including information about your location or upcoming plans, can make you vulnerable. For example, posting photos of your family vacation in real time can let burglars know your home is empty. It’s much safer to wait and post about your travels once you’re home. It’s important to remember that scammers are criminals who are skilled in deception. They often use technology to mask their location and identity, 1007 Broadway Ave Yankton, SD 605•665•4494 translucent. It’s also somewhat of a miracle that it falls at all, since it “requires a special set of circumstances” to be what it is, “as if in defiance of the cosmos.” Another miracle: more than 300 billion trillion snowflakes fall on this planet every year, drifting down somewhere every day, all day. We should be glad for that; says Whittell, without snow, there would be no ice caps, glaciers, or water stores for drier areas. We complain about having to shovel snow, in other words, but we need it. We need it, he says, for outdoor activities — so much so, that countries without it are happy to make it for skiing and snowboarding. We need it, even though there’s a lot we don’t know about it; we don’t know, for instance, how big a snowflake can possibly get. We need it because it can boggle the mind: it’s true that no two snowflakes are alike, for three basic reasons. We need snow for the fun, the history and for the challenge. And so, we live with it — to a point: some 50 million square kilometers of Earth are snow-covered and most of that’s uninhabited. We live with it — for now, anyway: says Whittell, by the end of this century, the world’s average snow depth is predicted to be “halved” … If you’re someone who’s eager for the first good snow, that’s sobering, but author Giles Whittell doesn’t leave you completely discouraged. Science has hypotheses. With EconoDri Grain Combo Planning For Your Grain Drying Needs Starts NOW! Delivering wet grain to town can mean TOO MUCH SHRINK & TOO MUCH DRYING CHARGE. The EconoDri concept puts the same idea to work as when standing crops dry naturally on low humidity fall days. of Tyndall on Hwy. 50 Corner of Hwys. 50 and 5 miles West www.schuurmansfarmsupply.com 37 Ph. (605) 5 3 89-3909 or Cell (605) 464-111 fingers. 823 Central Ave. Hawarden 1-800-646-9328 • 712-551-1523 Saturday (9:30-3) & Cyber Monday (9:30 -5) Nov. 30 & Dec. 2. 25 off $ a $50 purchase Expires Dec. 2, 2019 Excludes sale items. Must present coupon. HUGE FUEL SAVINGS! e o Smokll N e No Sm e s No Noi Culture has requirements. There’s a flake or two of hope inside “Snow.” In explaining our snowball’s chance and more, Whittell is seriously scientific but in a more lighthearted way that isn’t intimidating. No, there’s an avalanche of information inside here, and each page invites readers to learn something new and astounding, possibly life-saving, part geeky, part charming, and part eye-opening. Readers in snow country – especially those who grumble over ten gentle flakes – will especially delight in knowing how residents in equatorial climates deal with their lack of the white stuff. The biggest decision you have now is this: go outside and enjoy the winter, or stay inside by the fire and read “Snow”? Either way, don’t let this book slip through your Wear Black... Buy Black , RIDAY ER F B OVEMH N 9T 2 8AM-9AM .........35% OFF 9AM-10AM .......30% OFF 10AM-11AM .....25% OFF 11AM-6PM .......20% OFF Kid’s Under Armour Casual Active Wear Sizes 2T up to 7 Teal, Red, Royal, Grey, Lime Boys Infant to size 7 • Girls Infant to size 6X Linda’s Angel Crossing 1101 Broadway, Morgen Square • 665-0080 • Open Mon.-Sat. 10-6